My Great Grandfather's Murder

My great-grandfather (my dad's maternal grandfather) was murdered in 1935 by a 16 year old.

During a $9 robbery of his general store, he was hit over the head with a bowling pin by 16 year old James Sullivan, and promptly died. They were able to trace the pin back to the bowling alley where James worked, and he eventually confessed to the crime. Apparently, he was obsessed with John Dillinger...as his friends called him "Little John Dillinger".

The sentence was originally death, but my grandmother's family spoke on his behalf during sentencing, and it was commuted to life in prison. My grandmother Ethel passed away in 2008 (at the ripe old age of 98) and took all the first hand memories with her. No one quite knows what happened to James, so if you're related to him, or are him (aged 90ish)...it would be great to find out, so please leave a message below.

Anyway, here's an article I managed to dig up about James from the NY Post circa 1936. Figured it's worth posting here for posterity's sake.

EIGHT MINORS IN DEATH HOUSE AT SING-SING PRISON

SING SING PRISON, N. Y., Nov. 26—James Sullivan, seventeen-year-old schoolboy convicted of murdering a Brooklyn storekeeper in a $9 hold-up February 20, entered the death house at Sing Sing Prison Tuesday to await electrocution on January 7.

The arrival of young Sullivan brought the death-house population to twenty three. Nine of those scheduled to die have not yet reached twenty-one years of age. Never in the prison's history have so many minors awaited electrocution.

Shackled to Deputy Sheriff John Durant and accompanied by Deputy Sheriffs James Shortell and John J Gabay, Sullivan arrived hatless and without an overcoat, was neatly clad in a blue suit, black shoes and dark socks.

"The place seems so big and strange," he murmured as the deputy sheriffs led him to the warden's office for the customary examination. Responding to the question as to what led him to commit the crime, he said "I had, a craving for money."

Sullivan became convict No 62,-707 He is five months younger than Wenworth Springer, another seventeen-year-old death house inmate awaiting execution for a murder in New York. - Springer will precede Sullivan to the chair on January 7.

Sullivan was brought to Sing sing from the City Prison in Brooklyn where he has been lncarrcerated since last April. As he left the Brooklyn prison, a convict shouted: "Don't worry, kid. you won't burn."

A pailid, sandy-haired youth, Sullivan failed to see his mother as he passed through the gate and he seemed not to hear her cry: "my god, he's only a child".

Sullivan bashed a bowling pin on the skull of Herman Meyerson. forty-eight years old, when he entered Meyereon's store at 2881 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, last February and took $9 from the till. At school the boys had called him "Little Dillinger" because he read everything he could of John Dillinger, the late outlaw.

As a side note, one of Herman's sons became Lee Myles (of automotive fame) and was the star of a fairly amusing, possibly true, story I wrote in my blog last year.